Urban Sketch - Steam Locomotive at Port Talbot Parkway

 

This was the 70000 Britannia masquerading as the 70022 Tornado, at Port Talbot Parkway on a special excursion train on Weds 29th July, 2020 

Dyffryn Lower School Line and Wash

Decided to try to shake off the sketching cobwebs this morning, so took out my pens and my paints and made this. The subject is Dyffryn Lower School which is probably the closest school to my house. It wasn't actually what I set out in order to sketch, but it just seemed an obvious and natural building to do.

One Sketch #176) Port Talbot's Finest Actors

From one town
To the appreciative eyes and ears
Of the world.




O is for . . . Oscar Nominations. Yes, there cannot be that many towns in the UK that can boast as many Oscar nominations for acting as Port Talbot, my home for the last 32 years. The great Richard Burton, born in the Port Talbot village of Pontrhydyfen, was nominated no fewer than 7 times, although he never actually won, which must be a source of shame to the Academy. Sir Anthony Hopkins, born about a mile away from where I’m typing this now, in Margam, has thus far been nominated 4 times, winning for his unforgettable performance as Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs”. Now, okay, Michael Sheen, may not have been born in Port Talbot – he was born in Monmouth, South Wales, and he may not have been nominated for an Oscar – yet – but he’s a great actor who is proud to give his home town as Baglan, Port Talbot, where he grew up. If that’s not enough or you, then maybe I should mention Reginald Truscott Jones – not from Port Talbot itself, but just a few miles away in Neath, which is part of the same county borough of Neath and Port Talbot. Never heard of him? Well, maybe you know him better as Ray Milland, who won his Oscar for The Lost Weekend.

One Sketch #172) Briton Ferry Library.

A treasure house
Beyond all value
Tresor dyn y ddawn

L is for. . . Llansawel. This is a rather personal one. Llansawel is the Welsh name for Briton Ferry, which is a part of the town of Neath, in the County Borough of Neath and Port Talbot in South Wales. And it’s a place which is a bit special to me, since I worked in Briton Ferry for 29 years, as a teacher in the local school for 11 – 16 year olds. It was my first ever teaching post, and for the most part a very happy time in my life. I’d come to the stage where I was teaching children, whose parents I had taught many years before, and it wouldn’t have been long before I was teaching grandchildren as well. The school was amalgamated with two others , and I teach in the amalgamated school a couple of miles away now. This building, probably the finest left in Briton Ferry, is the library. I don’t know for certain if it is one of the libraries built by Scottish American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie – my own local library is - but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s run by dedicated local volunteers, which tells you all you need to know about the Briton Ferry community.

One Sketch #165 Port Talbot Steelworks Blast Furnace

Hotter than the fire of hell
We fill the night with marmalade smoke
And the smell of brimstone

I live in a town called Port Talbot, and it’s a town whose history for the last century has been intertwined with the steel industry. The steelworks dominates the town, and the blast furnaces, like the one you can see in the picture can be seen long before the rest of the town whichever direction you approach it from, whether by road or rail. In recent years the future of the steelworks has seemed to be in jeopardy, although things seem to have settled down more recently. I can only hope so. If anything happened to the steelworks it would be a devastating blow to the town

Sketching Tips 7) Sketching foliage

Foliage

It’s been a while since I last gave a ‘lesson’ and so please let me start with a reminder of my usual caveat. I’m totally self taught, and all I can tell you is about my way of doing things. I’m not recommending it as the right way or the best way, just explaining that this is how I do it, in the hope that this might help. 

Now, most of the time foliage – by which I mean trees, bushes and grasses – is definitely not the ‘star’ of my sketch. I’m not deiberately dissing foliage here, but I’m a city boy originally, and what I find excites me is achitecture, machinery and people. So I tend to keep to limit the foliage to outlines with a few light shading marks. This usually provides a nice contrast with the actual object of the sketch. For example, in the sketch of a bridge in Aberavon below, the lightly sketched grass and the sky together frame the bridge, which is the real ‘star’ of the picture. A few vertical or almost vertical strokes do a good job of conveying the suggestion of grass to the eye.

In a similar way, in the sketch below which shows Pontrhydyfen Aqueduct, the darkness of the stone contrasts with the outlines of the forestry, which have not been shaded at all. To keep it light, I sketched in a few areas of shadow, but merely left them as outlines, which is a technique that I find can work particularly well when you’re trying to sketch in trees and bushes.

A couple more examples of me using this technique are these two sketches:-

The British Lion Pub Cwmavon. In this sketch I’ve even included outlines of some of the larger leaves, but again, none of the foliage is actually shaded, because the building is the focus, not the trees.

I like this sketch below, of Dyffryn Rhondda Post Office in the Afan Valley, because there is a contrast between the trees on the right, and the grassy hill side on the top left of the sketch.

Now, this minimalist technique for sketching foliage is fine when you are making a building, or something else the focal point of the sketch. However there may be times when you want to sketch the foliage itself in more detail.

This is a sketch of the disused Cynonville Railway Station. The track was ripped up decades ago, and the station now is on the route of a cycle path from Afan Argoed Country Park. Its leafy, overgrown appearance is very much the point of what I wanted to show about it.

As with the bridge picture, I’ve used vertical, or near vertical lines to show grass. However, as you can see I’ve applied far more shading to the bushes. If I was really focusing on the hut, then I’d just have only drawn the outlines of the shaded patches, and not all of them either for that matter. With this amount of shading you just can help but be struck by how overgrown the place is, and the hut itself seems to be merging into the foliage, which is very much the idea that I wanted to convey – that the trees and grasses are slowly reclaiming the land.  

Then there’s this sketch I made of my own back yard:-

If you look at it closely, you can see that it’s actually an inversion of the way that I usually depict foliage in a sketch. The buildings are lightly shaded, where shaded at all, while there’s heavy shading on the bush, and many of the individual leaves are sketched and even some of their marking details are sketched in. And the reason is that when I made the sketch, I felt that the bush was as much the ‘star’ of the picture as any other element.

A few random points

If foliage is not the most important element of the sketch:-

·       The more shading of the foliage that you do, the more you will draw attention towards the foliage and away from the main elements of the sketch, which isn’t what you want to do.

·       You can get good effects by simply sketching in the outlines of blocks of foliage, and also the outlines of areas of shading.

·       A few vertical, or near vertical lines sketched close together can give the appearance of grassy areas.

If foliage is one of the most important elements of the sketch:-

·       Sketch in areas of shading. As with many things, the more different gradations of shading you use to suggest lighter and darker areas, the more detailed your foliage will appear.

·       Heavy shading tends to make foliage appear denser, bushier and more overgrown if this is the effect that you want to achieve.

·       You can achieve some very appealing effects by using areas of dark shading around negative space in the shape of individual leaves, especially if the background to the tree or bush itself is lightly sketched in.

One Sketch #111) Afan Argoed and River Afan

On Afan Argoed's paths
I'm never lonely,
There's plenty pass on bikes
Or Shanks's pony.

The drought has seen the River Afan wane
Shrinking underneath the steelworks' cranes.

This morning I was on a bit of a time budget, scheduled as I was to look after my 3 year old granddaughter from 12. So I started off making a quick ink sketch of the River Afan. Actually I did wonder if it would be quite a bit lower, bearing in mind that it's weeks since we saw a significant amount of rain. After that though I drove up the Afan Valley to the Afan Argoed Country Park. It's a bit of a mecca for mountain bikers. I'm not, but I don't mind a nice hike, and the walk along where the old railway line up to Cymmer used to be is particularly nice.

I still made it back in time for Mimi, and we had a lovely time painting together, thanks for asking.

Fame! Sort of.

Last year I set myself the task of making 100 urban sketches of Port Talbot, the town where I now live. You can see them in my sister blog 100 Faces of Port Talbot - the link is on the right of the page.

One of the sketches I made was of Francos restaurant and takeaway in Port Talbot. You can see the original here: -
Francos sketch 100 faces of Port Talbot
A couple of months ago the owners of Francos contacted me out of the blue to tell me how much they liked the sketch. To cut a long story short they have used this sketch on the cover and another new sketch inside their new menus. Proud? Not half! Here's the menu cover: -

One Sketch#85) Aberavon Rugby Ground (Monday 18th)

A place for shouts and sighs and cries
For up and unders
Scrums and tries.

This was made for a present for a big time Aberavon supporter. I've sketched the Talbot Athletic Ground before, but from an aerial view looking out across the ground and the town from Tydraw Hill.

One Sketch #84) Racing Buggy (Sunday 17/6/18)

I do this under protest
I did not ask
For my blinkers or harness.
Don't think for
One minute
That I'm enjoying this.
(Don't tell anyone
But I am.)

Okay, so on Saturday, all of a sudden this convoy of horse drawn racing buggies went trotting down the street in front of my house. Seriously. A couple of hours later they all came back, and I captured this one in a photo and used it to make this sketch. As a postscript, two of the silly buggers got drunk in the night and went for a jolly along the M4, and ended up having what I believe was probably a very awkward conversation with members of the South Wales Constabulary.

One Sketch #13 Aberavon Shopping Centre

I did make this sketch on Saturday, but again, time and life got in the way of posting it. So here we are. This is illustrative of the fact that I was looking after my granddaughter Mimi yesterday. Now, I'd made an offhand comment earlier in the week that when I saw her again, we'd do some painting together. I forgot about it, but apparently Mimi had been telling her mum all week that she was going to go painting with Grampy.

So, when she was dropped off at my house, I decided we'd make a special thing of it yesterday. I took Mimi into town to buy her a set of watercolours all for herself. This is the local shopping mall, called the Aberavon Shopping Centre: -

I haven't scanned Mimi's paintings yet, but I will do that later.
As for the accompanying verse

What can you say
For a shopping mall?
If you've seen the one
- You've seen them all.

One Sketch #12 In the Barbers

Yeah, I'll be honest, I found it very difficult to get any energy to do anything today. Since reading "Why We Sleep" I've really tried to cut right down on the amount of caffeine I'm drinking. I did sleep longer than 7 hours last night, but I've just not had any oomph today - caffeine withdrawal? Still, next week I'm heading off to Kaunas in Lithuania for a few days, and I wanted to get some Euros for the trip. While I was out, I popped into the barbers to get my hair cut, and made this very quick, surreptitious sketch while I was there: -

As you can see, it's just a very simple line drawing made very quickly on the spot, but sometimes you've just gotta work with what you've got. I remember having my hair cut in the same place this time last year, while I was off work with depression, and talking with the barber about my upcoming trip to Prague. It was while I was in Prague that I started to feel just a little more like myself - so a good memory.

As for verse. . .

It don't take long
To cut my hair
Each time I go
There's less hair there
I'm not quite bald
I think that's fair
But on top there's
More skin than hair.

One Sketch #8 "Mortal Coil"

On Saturday's sketching trip to Porthcawl I sketched a statue by Sebastien Boyesen called "Secret History". I knew this was the work of Sebastien Boyesen before because he has two fine pieces of sculpture on display in Port Talbot, and elements of "Secret History" are similar to one of these, called "Mortal Coil".

This reminded me that I've been meaning to have another go at "Mortal Coil" for some time now. If you know anything about Port Talbot, chances are that it is home to a huge steelworks, and owes what prosperity it has to its long term connection with the steel industry. The town's connection with the steel industry is the inspiration for "Mortal Coil".

Here's today's sketch: -

As before, I don't claim to be the finished article. But I do think that if you compare this to the sketch I made in 2016, which was one of my very first line and wash sketches, you may just have to admit that I've made progress. Here's the 2016 sketch: -

In my defence I want to make a few points about this one. Firstly, I was only just starting. I'd made maybe half a dozen sketches using HB pencil, and a couple with biro, which is what I used for the lines of this one. This was the first time that I applied watercolour to a sketch, and the paints I used were from a child's paintbox. Also my scanner doesn't pick out blue colours very well. For all of that special pleading, though, it isn't great. . . but . . . you have to start somewhere.

So, I'm feeling quite pleased with myself. As for verse - well, this is more generally about the relationship the town has with steel - inspired by the sculpture rather than specifically about it.

The rolling mills roll on,
Like incontinent dragons,
The furnaces
Belch forth rusty smoke
Iron ore and coke
Run deep in the veins of this town.
Where will we be
When all of this is gone?
Look down, look down
And hope that the rolling mills
Roll on and on.